Kizúar
Overview Situated due north of the river Khaviz, the city state of Kizúar is a walled settlement built upon the bones of an Elfin principality. It commands a strategic position over the Khaviz, and lies upon the intersection of several strategically important regional trade routes. Beneath cobbled streets running effluent with muck and the detritus of human habitation, there lie lay-lines still powerful, and wards that protect the settlement - a remnant of its recent past. In form, Kizúar is built upon an outcrop of imperishable igneous rock, the City's temples, Presidium - home to the state Diet, Collegia and Library mount the summit, while the settlement spills down into the fluvial plain below. The Presidium is heavily fortified with stout walls, flanking towers that provide prospective defenders with tactically significant vantage points over and beyond the wider settlement. A double barbican was added in the last century, after a number of Elfin incursions into the region, and a siege that almost saw the city fall. Kizúar has been in human hands for nigh on five hundred years. Once, it was considered to be a far flung bastion, a fluke of local geopolitics, and by the generation of its founders - a foolhardy experiment, doomed to failure. However, a kinswar between the Elfin bloodlines bought the fledgling settlement some reprieve, by the time the Grey Elves realised the threat that the city represented - more of Alfitaria was subject to the dominion of man. Kizúar became a bastion around which the Lords of man could rally, and call their banners. Demography Regis Onarsson, a visiting Dwarven academic at the Kizúar Collegia conducted a census some 78 years prior to the incumbent timeline, and while such a study has not taken place since, the authorities consider his estimations of the population as accurate in the present day - and have built their taxation model with this expectation in mind. state Diet considered his census was considered so revolutionary, so accurate by that they later awarded him citizenship, freedom of the city and a permanent position on the Council. Total population of the City Proper & Dependant Localities: 155,000 Urbanised population: 35-40,000. Racial/ ethnic origins: * 85.0% human - all kindreds. * 5.0% half-elven heritage - political status: tolerated. High Elven origin, preferred. * 2.5% elven Elves - political status: variable, often subject to pogroms, over taxation & widespread persecution. * 2.0% Outlander Human. Largely transient/ migratory. * 1.5% Dwarven. Prized as craftsmen, considered eccentric, if not entertaining. * 1.0% Gnomish. Insular, overlooked. * 3.0% Other ethnicity. Various, including Half-orcs, Dragoscii Dragonborn and Halflings. Government Kizúar is a founding state of the Hegemony, an organisation that is intended to preserve the interests of the various human realms established in and around the Fey Wastes. Kizúar is ruled by a constitutional oligarchy comprising of the local nobility, key merchant families, envoys from the Collegia, the Priesthoods and elected civic officials. Sessions of the primary house are held as part of the state Diet. A majority vote is required in order to ratify legislation and political directives. Main article: The Diet TBD Key Places * Council Chambers * Library * Collegia * Bazaar * Temple - Heaven's Reach * Pallazo * Westgate Inn * The Steersway Military Kizúar maintains a small, but significant (on a per capita basis) state military comprised of professional soldiery. Main article: Military of Kizúar